Modeling ideological polarization in democratic party systems

Dalton, Russell J.

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102346

Cited by 32 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…There are multiple types and levels of polarization established in literature [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] , which we discuss in the Supplementary Materials. However, we focus on 'ideological polarization' 44 of Twitter users, defined as the level of ideological separation between the political alignments of the content that these users propagate. For the remainder of the article, we use the term 'polarization' to refer specifically to 'ideological polarization'.…”

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confidence: 99%

Political polarization of news media and influencers on Twitter in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections

et al. 2023

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Social media has been transforming political communication dynamics for over a decade. Here using nearly a billion tweets, we analyse the change in Twitter’s news media landscape between the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections. Using political bias and fact-checking tools, we measure the volume of politically biased content and the number of users propagating such information. We then identify influencers—users with the greatest ability to spread news in the Twitter network. We observe that the fraction of fake and extremely biased content declined between 2016 and 2020. However, results show increasing echo chamber behaviours and latent ideological polarization across the two elections at the user and influencer levels.

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confidence: 99%

Political polarization of news media and influencers on Twitter in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections

et al. 2023

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“…Research on the political consequences of affective polarization, and to a lesser extent perceived ideological polarization, is relatively scarce (Iyengar et al 2019). Given the growing levels of polarization in democracies around the world (Dalton 2021;Gidron et al 2020), it is paramount to increase our awareness of the potential challenges this phenomenon poses to the stability of electoral democracies. Moreover, this study contributes to the literatures on the winner-loser gap and political support by…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In light of the rising polarization levels in many Western democracies (Dalton 2021;Gidron et al 2020), this trend is highly worrisome since losers who deny the legitimacy of the political system might not voluntarily adhere to the policies and laws of the new government (Kern and Kölln 2022). Moreoverwhen taken to their extremesunsatisfied losers may refuse a peaceful transitioning of power and instead turn to rebellion or revolt, as we have seen with the storming of the Capitol.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Essential Victories, Painful Defeats: The Moderating Effects of Polarization on the Winner-Loser Gap in Political Support

Janssen

2022

SSRN Journal

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“…Finally, we look at the known correlates of polarization and their association with this novel measure. Empirical research highlights the importance of elec-toral rules, as polarization tends to be higher in more proportional systems and in systems with more parties (e.g., Dalton, 2021;Dow, 2010). We assess these associations using both the one-and the two-dimensional measure as dependent variables, and proportionality (measured as the difference between parties' vote and seat shares; Gallagher (1991)) and the effective number of parties (measured via parties' seat shares; Laakso and Taagepera (1979)) as independent variables.…”

Section: Measurement Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional Party Polarization in Europe: Cross-Cutting Divides and Effective Dimensionality

Koedam¹,

Binding²,

Steenbergen³

2023

Preprint

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Ideological polarization matters. It is a necessary requirement for meaningful electoral competition, but at its extreme can strain democratic functioning. The conceptualization and measurement of contemporary ideological polarization is complicated by the growing complexity of the policy differences between political parties. Yet, existing indicators remain one-dimensional in nature, despite the wide acceptance of the multidimensional structure of European politics. To resolve this tension, we introduce a novel, two-dimensional measure of party polarization. Using the correlation matrix of parties’ ideological positions, we calculate the effective dimensionality of a political space, which accounts for the degree to which the dimensions crosscut each other. We highlight the advantages of this approach with both artificial data and positional estimates derived from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (1999-2019). Then, we explore the empirical implications of our multidimensional measurement strategy, and show that it is better suited to capture the relationship between party polarization and mass partisanship. This study has important theoreti- cal, methodological, and normative implications for our understanding of democratic representation in a changing political landscape.

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Modeling ideological polarization in democratic party systems

Cited by 32 publications

References 31 publications

Political polarization of news media and influencers on Twitter in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections

Political polarization of news media and influencers on Twitter in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections

Essential Victories, Painful Defeats: The Moderating Effects of Polarization on the Winner-Loser Gap in Political Support

Multidimensional Party Polarization in Europe: Cross-Cutting Divides and Effective Dimensionality

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